Tour of Trees

   On Friday night,  it was our turn to host part of the Tour of Trees.  Every year about 24 of our neighbors get together and do a progressive Christmas tour of 3 houses.  We started with appetizers and drinks at the first house, dinner this year was at our house, and the night ended at house number 3 for dessert and after dinner drinks.  It was a very fun night and I am glad my turn is done!  We don’t have to host again for 3 more years. :)

I served a lasagna and was biting my fingernails worrying if it was going to be enough to feed 24 people but in the end it was big enough and we even had some leftovers.   That lasagna was in the oven for two and a half hours and thankfully it was perfect when it was time to serve.  I had visions of  it being cold in the middle but it was nice and hot and I didn’t burn it!   Alongside the lasagna I served a big Caesar salad, lots of bread with olive oil for dipping or garlic butter, a big bowl of my Cranberry Pecan Orzo Salad, and a tray of Rosemary Ham with some salami and mozzarella pinwheels.  Beer, wine, and Pellegrino sparkling water and all was good.

   

I decorated three trees.  Too much!!  Anyway, the tree in the sunroom was fun to do.  I had picked up a bunch of aqua blue and silver Christmas bulbs at Good will last year and saved them not sure what to do with them.  When I saw the giant snowflakes at the dollar store the idea came to me to do the sunroom tree in aqua and silver with the icy snowflakes.  It turned out cuter than I expected and was VERY inexpensive to do. 

The next tree was in my dining room.  Not a great photo but that is my favorite tree.  It’s a skinny tree and I collect ornaments that look like food and candy and that is what I decorate that tree with.  And then we got a real tree from our friends who have a Christmas tree farm.  If you live in the Greensboro area the real trees you can get from Bruce Wagoner’s Nursery are beautiful and fresh.  They run the tree lot at The Friendly Center outside of the Sears and soon to open Whole Foods and they have a new location at the corner of Church Street and Highway 150 in the Summerfield/Brown’s Summit area across from the new Lowe’s Foods.    They sell Fraser Firs and the smell of their fresh trees will put you right  in the Christmas spirit.

Now for that tree I needed a topper.  I decided to make a snowman hat topper for it and added an old red plaid scarf.  The hat was easy to do.  For Halloween this year, I dressed as Mr. Peanut and decided to give my Mr. Peanut hat a new life as a snowman hat. If you want to make one for yourself, I found the plain black hat at Party City.   I cut out a red band out of a sparkly red felt and glued it around the base.  Then I cut out two holly leaves out of green felt and glued them on along with three bright red pom poms.  Easy and cute.

And this is one of my favorite new decorations that I did this year.  I told you I had a lot of aqua and silver bulbs compliments of the Goodwill.  I added them to my terrarium and I love it.

More silver bulbs added to a tray in the dining room.  You can’t get any easier than that. 

And finally, my very small Santa collection.  My Dad carved out four of the Santa’s and I love to put them out grouped together each year.  C’est tout!  It was a wee bit stressful getting decorated and entertaining so early in the season this year especially since I did something weird to my back and I have been trying to clean and cook and work  and not feeling all that great.  Back trouble is new to me and not much fun.  Anyway, whoa is me…it’s nice now to have it all done!